


In Another Life

by AsheRhyder



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (1984 TV), Sherlock Holmes (Downey films)
Genre: Crossover, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-15
Updated: 2012-08-15
Packaged: 2017-11-12 06:02:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/487526
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsheRhyder/pseuds/AsheRhyder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, the lines blur. He'd blame Sherlock, if he could just figure out which one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Another Life

    _“In another life, Mr. Holmes, you would have made an excellent criminal.”  
  
    “Yes, and you an excellent policeman.” _  
  
    Lestrade knows that Holmes doesn’t mean it; not the way it ends up, at least. The insult, yes, and perhaps he deserves it for making that little jibe, for toeing the line when Holmes so frequently produces better results than if Lestrade had to shoulder his way through these things alone.  
  
    It’s the after-part that Holmes didn’t mean; that Holmes _couldn’t_ mean, because even Sherlock Holmes wasn’t that cruel. Callous, indelicate, and cutting, yes, but never so cruel as to intentionally damn a man whose only crimes were being less brilliant and observant than Holmes himself. He would blame Blackwood, except that after the whole mess at Parliament, it’s revealed that Blackwood’s so-called black magic was nothing more than clever tricks wrapped in dramatics.  
      
    Therefore, those words are the only reason that Lestrade can produce to explain why his existence is a tangled mess of lives that are simultaneously his own and someone else’s entirely.  
  
    The realization creeps on him slowly, as they often do. He will look at Holmes and wonder, “was his hair always like that?” But he never asks; it must be, and Holmes detests it when he mentions the obvious. He never asks why Holmes starts slicking his hair back, or lets it stand out wildly, or curl impossibly. He never asks why there are subtle changes to the shape of Waton’s face and build, even when it seems to him that the good doctor was, perhaps, at one point several inches taller. He does so hate to have that exasperated stare pointed in his direction, and he knows there must be some logical explanation.  
  
    No, it’s not until he’s staring into the mirror and cannot recognize his own face that he realizes something is, perhaps, just the slightest bit wrong. He knows he has been getting older, but it is one thing to find a few gray hairs and another entirely to go to bed a brunette and wake up entirely silvered. And without the beard he had the night before. And with different colored eyes.  
  
    The washroom is unfamiliar to him, full of strange nooks and pipes much cleaner than any he recalls seeing in London before. At the same time, he knows this room; he has a whole ritual ingrained in his muscles, and he can go through it with his eyes closed. Does so, in fact, because looking at his reflection is throwing him off.  
  
    He lets his mind drift and finds himself at the Yard, in an office that bears his name, at a desk with paperwork covered in his handwriting. His team drifts in and out, usually with their voices at that level just on the professional side of shouting, and Sherlock bursts in, voice on just the other side of shouting, and Lestrade sits back in his chair and really _looks_ at him.  
  
    Sherlock’s taller than John, and his mind reels again when he realizes he’s just thought of both of them by their given name instead of their proper titles. He stands up to tell Sherlock - Mr. Holmes - that he can’t just barge into Scotland Yard making demands whenever he likes, and discovers that, to his horror, Holmes is taller than him. And there’s a small part of his memory that is unhelpfully supplying the idea that no, Holmes has always been taller than him, and so has Watson, which is in direct contrast to the short blond man who is now beginning to look rather concerned.  
  
    Lestrade sits down heavily in the middle of his rant, leaving Sherlock confused and slightly off-balance.  
  
    “Lestrade? Lestrade, what have you done to yourself this time?”  
  
    “Nothing,” he answers, because he’s fairly certain that’s the truth. “I’m fine.” That part may be a slight embellishment. He’s not sure.  
  
    “Look here a moment, will you?” John - Dr. Watson - _John_ leans in front of him and is probably doing something terribly doctor-like and medical that Lestrade couldn’t hope to follow in a hundred years, which is the only excuse he has for the sentence that manages to escape his mouth.  
  
    “What in the world have you done to your mustache?”  
  
    This causes John to freeze. Even Sherlock pauses, just long enough for Lestrade  to correct himself.  
  
    “I’m sorry, obviously you must have shaved, but what pray tell inspired you to do so?”  
  
    “Lestrade,” John says carefully, in a way that should be sending warning bells up and down the Inspector - Detective Inspector- Inspector’s spine. “When did you last see me with a mustache?”  
  
    Lestrade thinks hard. It sends frightful flashes of pain through his skull, all the way down to the ends of his fingers and toes, but he concentrates. He does not have Holmes‘ brilliance, or even Watson’s second-hand radiance, but he knows how to hold on to a fact.  
  
    “Always,” he says finally. “And I saw you on Tuesday.” This part is confusingly true and false at the same time. Part of him says it was Tuesday, and another part of him says not since April last, and another part insists - _insists_ \- that he hasn’t seen the good doctor since before the wedding, and oh, that hurts.  
   
    “Lestrade!” Someone shouts, and he opens his eyes again. The familiar walls of 221B greet him, conspicuously missing the eye-melting fleur-de-lis patterned paper, spray-painted smiley-face, and bullet holes from the Gun That Does Not Exist. Except it does exist, he’s seen the revolver - _pistol_ \- on several occasions, seen Watson check the bullets with the clinical detachment of a soldier preparing for war--  
  
    He shakes his head and tries to get a hold of himself. Sherlock is curled in his armchair, puffing away on that infernal pipe - _pipe? When did he start smoking a_ \- while John kneels in front of him, concern evident across his face. Outside it is dark; the gaslights along the wall fight off the night.  
      
    “Sorry,” Lestrade apologizes, giving them what he hopes is an apologetic grin. The expression must fall short, because Watson shoots a concerned look to Holmes, but Holmes has not looked away from Lestrade. “When did we get back here, then?” The mess is the same, always the same, but the furniture itself is unfamiliar. He can’t find that Union Jack pillow he likes so much, but there’s always the possibility it fell victim to any one of Sherlock’s experiments.  
  
    It takes a moment before he remembers to balk at the idea of putting the _flag_ on something as common as a _cushion_. It’s a national symbol, emblem of the empire, and it should under no circumstances be used to supplement the comfort-level of an armchair.  
  
    “Are you well, Inspector?” The doctor asks, looking around for his medical bag. “You seemed quite disoriented.”  
  
    Right. Like hell is he letting them worry about… whatever this is. Sherlock’ll just tell him he’s being thick again, and the thought twists a knife in his chest that he’d long thought he’d torn out.  
      
    “Fine, fine.” He waves Watson back, and Holmes tilts his head with an expression of laser-intense focus. “Just a bit tired. You know how it is. Always paperwork to finish, t’s to cross and what not, especially when Sherlock’s been on the case.”  
  
    “My dear Watson, will you be so good as to take a look at yesterday’s paper?” Holmes does not even blink, merely shifts forward, bringing that burning look even closer. Watson looks uncertain, and some part of Lestrade balks at the uncertainty of the man, but he goes and unfolds it anyway.  
  
    “For what am I looking?” He asks.  
  
    “Any mention of the Inspector being wounded in the line of duty.” Holmes’ eyes dart up and down, and the despair wells up, black and cold and heavy as mercury. “Particularly a head injury.”  
      
    “Now see here,” Lestrade stands up, which is actually a mistake, because so does Sherlock, and now that they’re all three standing, he is the shortest one in the room. Which is confusing, because he distinctly remembers being taller than John.  
    “Why do you keep glancing down to Watson, Inspector?” Sherlock asks, sharp as ever. “The tilt of your head has changed; and now to me, you attempt to stare straight ahead. You’re attempting to match eye contact on the wrong level.”  
  
    “I’m not,” Lestrade protests, but weakly, because he knows he’s been caught, and that desperation is reaching up to choke him. It takes all of his effort to get Sherlock to look at him in other situations, to turn and look at him on a crime scene, to look through him and see nothing more than a walking pile of boring, common data no more significant than that of anyone else on the street who is not, in fact, a mass murderer cleverly disguised as an unassuming Irish man--  
  
    And there’s a thought, that maybe this is Moriarty messing with everyone’s heads again, except why would Moriarty bother with him at all, he’s not important, certainly not to Sherlock Holmes --  
  
    The dark swallows him painfully, and he fancies he sees Holmes’ pale eyes widen ever so slightly as he collapses.  
  
    Doctor Watson hauls him back up and deposits him on a settee that is, with a sweep of the arm, cleared of more clutter than he thought was there a moment earlier.  
  
    “Inspector!” he says sharply, and briefly he wonders if another one of Mr. Holmes’ experiments haven’t gone off again. Watson’s concern only increases when he tries to duck away from the doctor’s hands; it’s only natural. No one pays attention to Lestrade, except to point out his latest mistake. He doesn’t think he’s responsible for whatever just happened, but he really doesn’t want to hear the correction anyway.  
  
    “I beg your pardon,” Lestrade lifts his chin slightly, expects the softening of his expression to put Watson at ease, but instead what it produces is the sudden appearance of Holmes, manic energy contained but still overwhelming as a well-placed mortar.  
  
    “Have you been injured, man? Why are you standing like that?” And now Holmes is at his eye level; how odd a thing to see! He cannot recall a time when they were ever even; Holmes is - _was? Should be?_ \- several inches taller than him, except now he’s not.  
  
    “Standing like what?” Lestrade tries to take stock of his position; hands behind his back, leaning slightly forward. He’s fidgeting slightly; he can’t help that. Except he also wants to stand straighter, hands down at his side, or even lean backwards, and cross his arms across his chest. All three stances feel as if they should be equally natural, and he clasps his hands tighter because he doesn’t want to fidget.  
      
    “Like someone else.” Holmes’ eyes narrow, and that riles something of the fighter in him again.  
      
    “Oh, come on,” his foot slides to the side, shifting his weight to spread evenly between them as his arms finally do cross in front of him.  
      
    “And someone else again.” Sherlock’s interested now; absolutely fascinated. Lestrade has never exhibited any skill with performance - _except that one time, but was that really a performance? He really had wanted to punch Sherlock…_ His strength, if it can be called as such, is to grab on to something and wear it into the ground. Usually the wrong idea. “Have you suffered a head injury recently, Inspector? There’s been no word of it in the paper, but they are frequently quite vague with the details, ‘man wounded in the operation’ and things like that. Watson, do take his hat, see if he’s hiding anything.”  
  
    Holmes is not an overly tactile man, but he does have a tendency to lean into one’s personal space, and he does so with disconcerting attention while Watson removes Lestrade’s hat and attempts a quick examination. The same part of him that argues that Holmes never invades his space- _it’s always the other way around to try and drag him out_ \- argues that he wasn’t wearing a hat, but that at least is quickly disproved by the black bowler that Watson tossed on the chair.  
  
    “You’ve already asked that question,” Lestrade mumbles, and now Holmes is doing that thing where he seems to be concerned, but it’s really just the resulting stare of him assembling the pieces of the puzzle with little regard for their state.  
  
    “Have I?” He asks.  
      
    “No, you haven’t.” Watson says, a little firmly. Bless the man, Lestrade thinks, even if he can’t stay the same blasted height.  
  
    “Your eyes are brown,” Lestrade says, his brow knitting in confusion.  
  
    “Well done, Inspector, your observational skills are certainly improving.” Holmes says dryly, but perhaps not as unkindly as he might.  
  
    “It’s just… when you’re taller than me, they’re blue.” This sentence, unfortunately, makes the most sense out of anything going through Lestrade’s head at the moment. Mostly, now, it’s just pain.  
  
    “And how often does that occur?” It’s Watson who asks the question, gently, humoring him, but the same words are reflected in Holmes‘ dark eyes with genuine curiosity.  
  
    “Increasingly.” Lestrade admits, because there is no point in trying to say otherwise. No matter the color of his eyes, or who is taller between the three of them _(and it’s never himself, he’s never the tallest_ ), one thing that remains the same is Holmes‘ unfailing ability to see through him. To see… “Oh!”  
  
    He hadn’t thought the pain could get any worse. In a moment of further self-depreciation, he realizes he was, once again, wrong. It inconveniently - _purposefully?_ \- coincides with another epiphany, one that thankfully rushes in to fill the dark space behind his eyeballs where the pain has gutted all other thoughts.  
  
   _“In another life, Mr. Holmes, you would have made an excellent criminal.”  
  
    “Yes, and you an excellent policeman.”_  
  
     **“When did you last see me with a mustache?”  
** _  
“Why are you standing like that?”  
  
    “Standing like what?”  
  
    “Like someone else.” _  
      
   _**“You’ve already asked that question.”  
  
    “Have I?” **_  
  
   _“… when you’re taller than me, they’re blue.”_  
  
   _ **“In another life...”**_  
  
    In another life, Holmes is still a detective. In another life, he continues to consult with Scotland Yard. In another life, despite the frustration, despite the worry, despite those dozens upon dozens of quirks and quibbles and incomprehensible flashes of genius, Sherlock Holmes is a good man.  
  
    And Lestrade is still no better a policeman.  
  
  
Epilogue One:  
  
    He says it, not because it deserves to be said, but because somewhere in the back of his mind he knows he owes it to the man.  
  
    "We're not jealous of you down at Scotland Yard. No, sir, we are proud of you, and if you come down to-morrow there's not a man, from the oldest inspector to the youngest constable, who wouldn't be glad to shake you by the hand.” There is some cost to saying this, to being a voice for the entire Yard to express the multifaceted admiration of the men who have watched Mr. Holmes work and who consider him, though not exactly one of their number, to be the closest thing to it. It is instantly repaid by the expression on Holmes’ face, the slight twitches, the almost imperceptible surprise, the sudden sharpness of his voice dropping to a sincere murmur. It is repaid in the little jibe by the door, acknowledgment of worth without ignoring flaw. It is repaid in the handshake, offered freely.  
    It wipes clean a debt that Lestrade has not exactly incurred himself, but feels he might have, if things were slightly different.  
      
    It is enough. It is more than enough.  
  
Epilogue Two:  
  
    When Sherlock Holmes reveals himself to have survived the fall in Switzerland, he does so to John Watson first. This does not surprise Lestrade. In fact, Holmes reveals his presence to the entirety of the Yard before he deigns to inform Lestrade, which, while frustrating, is still not surprising. Lestrade only finds out because Clarkie can’t stop smiling, and when a policeman is smiling that much, someone’s day is about to make an abrupt turn for the worse. The Inspector does not see Holmes himself until the arrest of Colonel Moran, whereupon Holmes, ever theatrical, doffs his disguise and takes a bow.  
  
    “My point still stands,” Lestrade growls, having by this point heard about how the rest of the Yard has, on some occasion or another, encountered Sherlock Holmes in outlandish disguises. Holmes raises an eyebrow, alert brown eyes showing the instant that the man grasps on to Lestrade’s meaning. “You would have made an excellent criminal, so I’m rather glad you’re not. I’ve got enough trouble on my hands as is.” It covers up the things he would like to say, things he had hoped he’d said over the years with actions, with trust given with keys and doors closed to accommodate plans. Sherlock Holmes will see through it. He always does; it’s why he lets Lestrade tag along. It’s also why Lestrade will never be at his side, not the way Watson is. The challenge that Lestrade offers is not up to the task, and there is nothing to be gained by saying as much.  
  
    “Three undetected murders in one year won't do, Lestrade. But you handled the Molesey Mystery with less than your usual — that's to say, you handled it fairly well.” Holmes offers his usual cutting edge, but there’s some balm to go with it, and it’s a sad thing to say, but he’s got the taste for that medicine now.  
  
    It is enough. It has to be.  
  
  
Epilogue Three:  
  
    He realizes he is staring at the wall, consumed by the echoes of three feelings: a feeling of satisfaction, a feeling of, as the French call it, _l’esprit de l’escalier_ , and a feeling of frustrated emptiness. The first two are distant and ill-fitting; they are, he knows, no more his own than his shadow. The last is all his own, his own private vintage of despair that he has tended all these years, suffused with notes of frustration, exhaustion, and, bitterest of all, acceptance.

  
    “Lestrade?” John Watson’s voice is soft. Gentle. Like always.  
      
    “Are you paying attention? Do you want a murderer to go free?” Sherlock Holmes’ voice is sharp. Strong. Like always.  
  
    Lestrade shakes his head and turns to look at them. There is a memory of pain, but it is even fainter than the almost-forgotten satisfaction.  
  
    “Give me what you’ve got,” he says, and he pushes himself to his feet even as he pushes those other feelings down. There’s no point in clinging to something that’s hardly his and never will be.  
  
    It’s not enough. It’s all he gets.

**Author's Note:**

> Elements taken from the Granada, 2009, and BBC versions of Sherlock. Some dialogue quoted directly from canon and flagitiously re-purposed to suit the story. In case it's not terribly obvious, all characters and characterizations belong to their respective owners, of which I am not one.


End file.
